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Re: The "Game" in LT

#76
Hyperion wrote:
Fri Jun 01, 2018 5:53 pm
So in coming across Jason VandenBerghe's 2018 followup to the video I posted in the OP, he brings up an aspect of game design which has been somewhat neglected, namely the fundamental psychological drives of Tend and Befriend. Put forward as the corollaries to Fight or Flight, he notes that a significant portion of people don't want to play games based on adrenaline and action, that many people want to take a Stardew Valley or Sim City approach to fun where they can tend to virtual "crops" and develop and nurture relationships with the imaginary friends the game provides without having to worry about being attacked in any way.

You do know that this is exactly a subset of the psychological system I outlined in my Gamasutra article from 2011, yes?

That's not an assertion that "my stuff is unquestionably correct" -- it's more a "yep, I agree, and here's some stuff I wrote to explain why."

To simplify it for this thread: people are neurochemically wired with different needs, and among other things these needs are reflected in our preferences for gameplay fun. Some people mostly want intense sensations ("adrenaline and action"); some people mostly want to nurture characters ("friends"). Still other people want to follow clearly-defined rules in order to accumulate wealth-tokens; and others are mostly interested in poking systems to discover their dynamic patterns.

Which of these preferences is best satisfied by LT remains to be seen.

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